Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — Earned Not Given: The Story of The Granite Games w/ John Swanson  — 338

Episode Date: September 15, 2018

John Swanson is the founder and CEO of The Granite Games, owner of Fast Factory Fitness, and owner of Factory Forged.   The goal of The Granite Games is to create a platform that allows all levels and ages to chase their athletic dreams. Our event gives athletes of every skill level the opportunity to compete and have their own professional athlete experience. Each element of this experience is carefully crafted to create a lasting impression. Everything from the athlete’s personalized name tag to the design of the competition floor all play a critical role in this experience.   In this episode, we talk about why we are all athletes, how to go from a small gym to a national competition, reaching over 2,500 athletes in one weekend, the future of The CrossFit Games, the future of The Granite Games, and more.   Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_swanson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and get a box FREE with your first purchase @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Truck family, coming back on a Saturday. We have Mr. John Swanson, the CEO of the Granite Games. We spent five days out at the Granite Games this past weekend, recorded seven shows. What an awesome weekend. I am so grateful that we were able to attend. Working with John was an amazing experience. Everybody out there was incredibly

friendly. We were able to be a part of him launching the Granite Games into the mainstream of the CrossFit season, which is incredibly cool. We had a big roundtable event on Thursday night, which Jason Kalipa was the keynote speaker. John Swanson also was able to get up on stage and tell the world and announce it before CrossFit put up that they were going to be one of the new regional events on the circuit for qualifying for the games. So instead of having a one-year process to turn the Granite Games over, they've got like 10 months, and they are going to be the final stop on the circuit

to qualify for the CrossFit Games. So incredibly cool. What a great time to be in the CrossFit community. What a great time for us to be at the Granite Games. I am just super happy that we are able to be there. I also want to give a very special shout-out to Adam Smith. The guy took care of us all weekend, every single time. We needed a coffee, a water, maybe some snacks.

The guy was just right there and, man, took care of us, and it was just super appreciated. From top to bottom, every single person we met, phenomenal human beings, phenomenal time, and very grateful we were able to be a part of the experience and able to sit down with john and just kind of understand the vision of where they've been where they're going over the last eight years understand his background and why this event was started in the first place

really stoked for you guys to listen to the show and uh we'll catch you at the break talk soon Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. We are hanging out at the Granite Games, the Kill Cliff Granite Games. And we've had an amazing experience from the roundtables on Thursday night, a bunch of killer interviews yesterday, and now Doug Larson in the house, and we are hanging out with John Swanson, the CEO. Is that the official title? Yeah.

The mastermind behind this entire thing. This has been an incredible event. We are staying over at the courtyard. I literally feel like every single time I go down into the lobby, it's like the who's who of the fitness world hanging out. Much to your hard work and bringing all these people together.

It's very cool. I'm always a little shocked that people say yes. Well, they say yes because you bring everything that's here. You guys started this event, what, eight years ago now? Yeah, 2011, October. Yeah, and that was kind of in the 2011 in the CrossFit space.

Nobody was dreaming or thinking big about what this could be eight years later at all. What was kind of the beginning of the Granite Games? Were you guys thinking purely this small local competition or was regional kind of the idea at the beginning so year one year one i had just retired from playing hockey and there was a an individual that joined my gym and she was well over 300 pounds and on an amazing journey and you know she went on to absolutely trans you know transform her life like CrossFit has done for so many individuals but I kept calling her an athlete and to me athletes not about what your body can do but it's how you attack life from a mental state of just

you know just that you know competitive mindset to be better in everything fatherhood uh business life and I kept calling her an athlete and she one day basically told me to go get blanked competitive mindset to be better in everything, fatherhood, business, life. And I kept calling her an athlete, and she one day basically told me to go get blanked in class. And I was like, whoa, okay. And then I sat back, and I was like, okay, she's 300 pounds. She's never played in a sport in her life, and she probably is offended that I'm trying to call her an athlete because she doesn't – there's nothing inside her that makes her feel that way. Yeah.

And so I tried to get myself in her shoes, and I was like, well, how do you make somebody feel like an athlete that's never been an athlete well you have to create something where they have butterflies and so i was like i'm gonna create an event a competition and we're gonna cap it we're gonna only make it local athletes and we're gonna have like 20 people do it but it was just really for her and so we actually had 49 athletes do it um and it was awesome she She, she competed, she got her name on the back of her shirt and she had butterflies and she had that experience. Right. And then at that moment on, she was an athlete because again, it's about the mindset of the individual, not the physical capacity. Yeah. Everybody's an athlete. And, uh, that's

how we started it. And then year two, we had 99 athletes come, and all of a sudden now we had people coming from out of state. I was like, well, this is really weird. And I said to my wife, Jessica, I just said, if we're going to either do this, we have to go really big. You either got to be a big fish or you got to stay really small. Yeah. And so big at the time was moving on this floor,

first workout, Marcus Philly snatching, Akinwale, you know, Tovar. You know, all these people are in the building. I'm like, wow. So year three, you started to have, like, big names show up. Yeah. And we moved venues because the first two years were in my gym. It was tiny. And, you know, 49 athletes, 99.

Year three, we thought we knew what we were doing. And it was a year that, like, literally killed us. It was a really, really hard year because you realized we had no clue what we were doing and there was a year that like literally killed us um it was it was it was a really really hard year because you realized we had no clue what we were doing um you know i i always say we're here today because we were lucky enough to start so early and then we made all our mistakes before people were watching yeah so that that's how we got in this was there was no intent of being a sanctioned event there was no intent of having you know one of the largest fitness that i wish i could say that i had a master plan we we created the event

for one person to help her overcome an obstacle that she was facing well i think a real testament to what you guys have built and the culture of all of this here is man at the time when you guys started it there was a lot like it was kind of like you got your chops at these, like, local slash regional competitions. And in SoCal, we had the OC Throwdown. The Granite Games was out in the Midwest. The Bergeron had one in the Northeast. ECC.

ECC, that's right. The Garage Games was a big one in the South. There's one up in Washington, I believe. Isn't there? There was. Cascade came in. Yeah. I don one up in Washington, I believe. Is it there? There was. Cascade came in. I don't know if they're still happening.

You have Wadapalooza. I mean, there was Jeremy Teal had his event. I think it's the Fittest Games. Yeah. So we had that. It was like kind of sectioned off of like this is where you find out if what you're doing is working before CrossFit. The season starts. And there's only like two of those still around maybe three yeah um it the this thing this event space is really tough um you know there's a lot of times people think it's a three-day deal and it's like well

we've been here for two weeks and yeah you know you don't get to see your son or daughter for 10 days i haven't seen my kids and i'm sleeping at the same house they're at but i'm coming home at 11 o'clock and leaving at six in the morning and so uh i think it's a real grind yeah just as being a professional athlete in this sport right what's the life cycle of of an athlete and what's the longevity of a director it's it's you know not that i need people to feel sorry for us it's it's a path i've picked but it's it's harder than i think what the eye can see yeah everyone i don't think people realize that you you work all year for one weekend just like an athlete trains all year for the game it's not like the six weeks leading up to the games they get in shape it's like it's a year-round

thing to get ready for a big competition like this, I would think. Yeah, we had, in August, we had our 2019 planning meetings. So we had dates picked out. Obviously, everything just changed. So that meeting, we had an eight-hour planning meeting, which was really a beautiful thing to see the team, like, pause. Let's look forward. Oh, by the way, we have this huge thing coming in 30 days.

And, yeah, we had a great planning meeting, and we have to scrap it, and we'll roll with the punches, and we'll pick back up right after this. Yeah, and just as context, not only have you guys made it eight years, been one of the very few, like, large regional competitions, but you guys just got announced as – I would imagine – I actually thought you guys would be the first announcement, but it's nice to be able to do a live announcement in front of all the athletes and all the fans and and everyone um but you guys are part of the new structure of the crossfit games and how that is

going to roll out for many years to come yeah it's uh even if you, the fact that we were just thought about was crazy. Yeah. You know, I can honestly say every year I've questioned, can we keep doing this? Because it is hard. It's really hard. And there's, for the first six years, I was never committed to the next year. I was like, well, we'll take a look a couple months after and see if we want to do it again. Obviously now already having our planning means, like we're all in.

But, yeah, so I would call it a complete honor to even just be mentioned amongst Dubai and Wadapalooza and, you know, some of the other events. Those guys are putting on legit shows and, you know, we're in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Well, I was going to say, I'm not by any means part of the ownership group, but it's like it's a very cool feeling just even being here and, like, knowing. And I was a very large part of the OC Throwdown back in the day, and it probably took at least, you know, 10 to 12 years off my life every time we tried to throw that event.

So I know what goes into it, and then you really have no idea. I mean, every year that we did it, it was literally like we'd wake up a week later and you'd be like, are we going to do that again? That might have been really stupid. I don't know what we did over the last six months that provided, like, a lot of value to our family. And then because it's so many hours, and then we saw you on Friday morning and you didn't sleep we just found out that you were changing a bunch of equipment around and

things didn't work out and that happens every single year and then a week later you wake up you're like i don't know if that that probably wasn't worth it yeah there is an amount of money that may be worth the pain that that was and then all of a sudden it you make it or maybe not you make it but you get to a point where it's like oh there is a reason we're then all of a sudden it you make it or maybe not you make it but you get to a point where it's like oh there is a reason we're doing all of this hard work yeah and it's because it provides a ton of value for the people that are here and now you're able to actually reach people on this like almost global level as a place where people can come to have a great experience yeah it's a it's a massive fitness meetup is what it's turned into and you know you guys are somebody

that i've always looked up to and you know you know, the crazy part, like you said, when you're doing the OC, I mean, I looked up to the OC. I was studying their marketing packages, the branding, the whole, like we all used each other to grow. Because the truth is nobody knew what they were doing. We were all guessing. Yeah. And so we had to study the other events. And through that, we all grew together, which is really neat to see happen. Yeah.

In eight years, I've never, happen um yeah in eight years i've never i've been a volunteer i've never taken a paycheck i feel blessed that i have a an amazing gym and you know we do some affiliate consulting and so to me this thing is like crossfit provided an opportunity for my life to move past hockey yeah and so you know each year when you're a volunteer and you work 365 days and you're the person that takes on the risk i mean there's years where you know we've lost 100k and i had to go find money to pay our bills because we owed people money and we did not have a good year yeah is it one of those things where even if you did make money the expectation every year is that next year is going to be bigger

and better and more badass than the year before. And so even if you made money, you've got to dump it into the next year to make it that much better. I think I went on record saying the other day, I'm like, the expectations of the growth of the event are faster than the revenues. So the expectation is something I've talked to a couple of other groups. I'm like, guys, we have to find the happy medium. Like, you know, a couple of years ago, the athletes expected shoes and shorts. What they get at the CrossFit Games is, what, a $2,000 or $3,000 package

for 300 athletes, 400 athletes, and it's coming from a company that's worth... A billion dollars. Yeah. Probably multiple billions. I can't do that. Yeah. And so the hardest part is try to provide as much as we can for the athletes, but not have it sink the ship so the event happens the next year.

Right? So it's that balance of like, it's like your children. You got to get them to be as happy as they can, but at the same time disciplining them in the own right that they grow up to be young, you know, individuals that we're proud of. And so sometimes that means saying no. And that's a hard thing to say. We were the first to kind of pull the shoe package. We can't keep doing this.

This is absurd. And it's absurd to ask our sponsors for this. You know, there's 2,000 people competing here today. That's like semi-loads of shoes. And so the infrastructure of, like, what they do at the games and trying to model that, but also pausing for a second and saying, okay, of like what they do at the games and trying to model that, but also pausing for a second saying, okay, that's what they do there. What can we learn from it?

How can we grow from it? But what actually fits our event and how can we make that happen? Yeah. And I don't think anybody understands just the equipment that you have to put into this. So like it used to be, let's get a bunch of barbells and bumper plates and let's roll them out. Well, now we have to have blue barbells because that's the new cool thing. It has to look cool. There has to be pageantry to this thing.

It can't just, like, the entertainment factor, the way it looks and feels, that matters, and that's really expensive. And you can't just roll. You used to be able to. I'm sure your first one, you did it at the gym. You were rolling out your black bumper plates. Like, ah, whatever. Who cares what they look like?

And, you know, just stack them up. No, you can't do that anymore. You have to have the beautiful red and blue and yellow plates. You have to have, you know, just the rig that you guys have outside. If you're going to build an obstacle course, well, it has to look, you know, CrossFit Games has set the obstacle course to look like this, so that's now the expectation. Nobody thinks, wow, that costs a lot of money.

That's a lot of people that have to build that thing. Someone's got to be in charge of that. That obstacle course, I think it looks legit. It looks super legit. Totally. But with things looking professional comes a crazy expense yeah this year we did uh they're doing the one rep max right now and every barbell is brand new customized earn not given on it with this year's logo um and they're green and they you know it's just

but part of that goes into you know big thing that we're about is eliciting the emotion of being an athlete and so i i'm i've never really been a CrossFit athlete. I've been a CrossFitter, but I don't get to compete because I'm on the other side. I have to imagine when you walk up to your barbell and you hook in and the barbell says, earn not given. It's something you cannot get at your gym. And that's part of the expectation we also have to do. The rig here is longer. The equipment they get to play with here they've never seen before. at your gym. Yeah. And that's part of what we, the expectation we also have to do. Right? The rig here is longer.

The equipment they get to play with here they've never seen before. And CrossFit set that standard, and that's what makes the space cool. Yeah. And so what we've been forced to do is find creative ways to hold that standard without sinking the ship as it moves forward. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's that balance of make it amazing, make sure you can have the event next year.

Yeah. Well, you guys also put a ton of value just in the athletes. Like there's 2,000 of them here. Has that been a really conscious decision that the athlete is going to be the focus versus vendors, spectators? I mean, you have to think about those things. But 2,000 athletes is a huge number so we've always been first and foremost uh athlete first yeah um second and and that's the thing that

i would say we've we we don't always get right but it's the thing that we try to always get right um a lot of times our vendors have been an afterthought our spectators have been an afterthought and i that's why i look at other events i look at like wadapalooza i think you look at an event that puts on a show like it's a it's a spectacle their event is amazing from a spectator side and so we're trying to grid was the same thing from a spectator side they did such an amazing job of how they laid out the floor the decals the progressions all those things the games i mean this year at the games like the pageantry of the event. And so it's, that's what we're trying to improve is like making it much more

consumable for the fan now. And same thing with, you know, our partners, the round tables that we did this year, huge thing for the athletes, huge thing for the professional athletes in the space to be able to give back, huge things for our partners. We're trying to think a little bit outside the box now of like, okay, athletes are number one focus. How can we pull some other people in? How can we help everybody win, whether it's a spectator, an athlete,

a vendor, you know, a partner? And that's the mission we're on. Yeah. That was dope, by the way. Like all the people that got to walk around and just meet whoever their, you know, famous superstar is, where Jason Kaliba is and Brooke Ence is of the world. Like, those people just walk around on the floor.

And if you were just a – sorry. Mesliado. Yeah. There you go. A little better. Yeah. That was really cool for all those people that got to just walk around and meet any number of two or three dozen, like, super famous, you know,

CrossFitters. Like, how fun would that be if you, like, looked up this person on Instagram for your whole life and then just got to walk around and meet like 10 of them within 30 minutes? I walked into the room where we were staging everybody. And I was just like, wow. Yeah. Wow.

Like Chris Spieler was my level one coach. Jason Kalipa, games champion. Ben Smith. I'm like, the amount of fitness inside this room before they took the floor. I was like, and then I had to speak in front of all of them. And I'm like, oh, this is not my forte. I don't keep it short, John. Don't screw it up.

Don't mumble. Like, yeah, it was incredible. I hope the athletes look back at what a neat experience. And it was interesting. Ben Smith came up to me afterwards. He goes, dude, that was awesome. Do you know how fun it is just to get to talk to these individuals? Or like Marcus Philly's like,

that was perfect. I got to hear where they're actually at in their journey. And that actually helps me with what he's doing. Yeah, totally. So that was a completely unknown. I was like, this could bomb and none of these people ever come back again. Or they'll see it for what it is, is very early on, cool concept.

We've got to grow it. We've got to build on it. We can do better. But it was 40 days ago that we said, let's do this. I've never, like, fully, like, where people listen to the show and how people consume the words that come out and just in their cars. I always assume. And then you meet people from like Australia and they're like,

you're the face to the voice. I know you. Technique WOD. Like you guys are awesome. You're like, wait, Australia? This thing goes that far? Like holy crap. It's just so cool to meet people actually that are like listening to what goes on and like we

we can sit here and reach tens of thousands of people but when you actually meet the one person um it's always like to me it's just something like really you listen to this thing like i thought we were just kind of talking to our friends the person you were referring to was so awesome she was like you you're the host the host. Those eyes. Oh, those eyes. And you were just like, whoa. Well, you guys posted a picture on Instagram of her. She's going to, I hope she listens and she's going to love this. Um, he posted a picture of her on Instagram last night. And I want to say it was like her first bar muscle up and she's 60 years old or something like that. And like, you can just see her face was like the most excited person in the world for sure

in that moment and i was like that lady she loves her life like she is in minnesota right now she just got her first bar muscle up in front of thousands of people and that's why this thing exists it's so cool i saw that photo and i said if one photo could capture who we are as a as a group community that was the photo yeah the only thing that would make it different if there was more people in the photo it's just her right but her expression her energy and just everything you could her photo tells the story of what our community is about. Yeah. It was so neat. And the progression. I mean, she's 60 years old. She just did a bar muscle-up. What the hell is that?

My first thought was actually, like, did they program bar muscle-ups for 60-year-old women? That's insane. Yeah, I'm impressed they could do it at all. I don't train 60-year-old women. I didn't know that was a thing for them. No clue. They asked for it.

So one of the things that I do is we have a private community page, and I allow our athletes to be very vocal. And so the master is like, John, we're ready. Don't take that away from us. We're ready. We want it. And I'm like, all right, which scares me. But I'm like, I have to listen to the community because this is community-driven.

We are a community-driven event. And if the group, the audience, the teens, I under-programmed the teens so bad two years ago. How could you know? They're freaks. They did, like, a workout that was supposed to be a four-minute workout. And one of the kids, one of my floor directors texts me and she goes, this kid just went on broken and did nine seconds.

And my first thought was. Nine seconds? 90. It was supposed to be, like, a four-minute workout. And I was like, dude, he was moving like RX weight. That is insane. So one critical is we allow the community to give us feedback. So for her to have that moment, that never happens if they're not comfortable saying,

we're ready as a group. We work hard just like everybody else does. Don't take it and modify it too much that we can't show how hard we've been working. Knowing, though, that they're not a professional athlete and understanding the volume. The pros are easy to program for. The masters and the teens and the scale to get it right, it actually takes way more thought. Oh, look at that. Coffee showed up, a t-shirt.

Speaking of programming, now that you guys are a CrossFit sanctioned event, do you still have full control over what the workouts are since you're qualifying people for the games? Yeah. One of the interesting things, and I think the beautiful things, you know, Coach has talked about is he believes that we should be able to keep telling our story and allow us to have that control. Now, there's going to be some review, which I also look at it as like, that's great.

I think it's great that they're going to review our safety plans and a lot of these things. I think it's really going to rise the tides of all the events. I think what we talked about earlier with some of the events that are no longer, if this was now the case, I think those events are here. Yeah. I think they're here. And I think our community is stronger.

And I think now that we're finally realizing that we can pull those guys in, and I think it'll be great. I think the workouts getting reviewed by HQ, I'm all in for. Yeah. I'm not afraid to show that stuff and that process. But I also would say I would have never agreed if I had to give it up. Yeah. You guys are also doing, like, a very cool thing with some charity work.

And that seems, I mean, in your talk to all of the people that were doing the roundtables, that was, like, at the kind of the core central message of what you guys are trying to do here. It's not just the event, but how do we make this not in the charity stuff, but giving back to the gyms. And that's a very large piece of the messaging that you guys have going on here. This your son, dude? This is my little one. I haven't seen these guys in 10 days.

Yo, bud. Yeah. He is two. Awesome. He's like the biggest two-year-old in the world. He's a huge two-year-old. Yeah. Check that guy out. I was like, is he three, four years old? Yeah. K is two. Awesome. He's like the biggest two-year-old in the world. Dude, he's a huge two-year-old. Yeah. Check that guy out.

I was like, is he three, four years old? Yeah. Killing it. And he's bigger than his four-year-old sister right there. See that. Wow. She loves unicorns like you would not believe. Yeah.

That's great. I think, so one, allowing us to do the programming is amazing. We were talking a little bit about never, ever give up. One of the things that's... I left the event last year, and I was sitting here, and I think about these two a lot, and legacy. And I think about, like, it's kind of weird to say, but like laying on your deathbed.

Like, building this event, I don't think leaves a legacy. Yeah. But I think understanding what we've built and then taking it and using it for the most good possible, I think that can leave legacy. And so I looked at it and I'm like, okay, I have the eyes and the ears of a lot of individuals. It is my social responsibility to figure out how to do the most good in the world as I can. And so that's when we paired up with Jason and never, ever give up.

And I was like, okay, we have 6,000 to 8,000 people coming in. How do we make an actual social impact that changes people's lives that we'll never meet? And that's where the roundtables were inspired. That's where the fundraising was inspired. I mean, we're hoping to hit $50,000 just this year. Or some of the stuff we've done with the CrossFit affiliates. But that's just getting started. That's something I can walk away, and when I walk away from doing this hang my hat on and say

i'm proud of that because this is cool but after you've done it for a couple years you've done it it's work it's work but if i can go out and raise and change somebody's life and help them go through something that i could never imagine going through myself yeah i think it's, to me, it was a flight I was on. I was coming back from a conference, and at the conference I was at, they raised, it was like $2 million in two hours. And it was a bunch of business owners, and the nonprofit was working to end sex trafficking. And Tony Robbins was speaking, and there was a bunch of business owners in the room. And what we ended up buying was, it was beautiful how they did it. They sold us a T-shirt and the recording to the Tony Robbins was speaking, and there was a bunch of business owners in the room. And what we ended up buying was, it was beautiful how they did it.

They sold us a T-shirt and the recording to the Tony Robbins talk for $400. And we all lined up and got behind the cause. And we got something out of it. We got Tony, and he's an amazing person to listen to. But on top of it, we made a massive impact. And they showed where that $2 million, how it got spent. You know, it takes like $1,800 to save a child. And it takes another $2,000 to actually rehabilitate them so they can go on and live a normal life.

And I was sitting there and I just, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Like I felt horrible about who I was and what I had not done with my event. And I was like, we have to do something. We have to make a change. And that change has to start like tomorrow. I think I called my team and I was like, we have to do something. We have to make a change. That change has to start like tomorrow. I think I called my team and I was like, we're starting a nonprofit. This whole event is going to transform overnight. And we so, you know, that was our hammer.

We swung. Yeah. And so that's the thing that is going to drive this event. And it's also, I think, what's allowed the volunteers to get behind it. Yeah. You know, when they can understand what we're really doing is actually nothing to do inside this room but something that lives outside of us yeah for people that didn't come to this event is there a way like on your website for them to donate this year i the issues with with the donations is making sure we don't break any legalities

because there's yeah yeah some stuff with that and so that's the thing of, you know, the event I went to was, I think, in June. And we were like, we're doing this. And we just went with it. So the long-term goal is to understand how to get all that stuff set up. But we went from just being an event company to, okay, we're going to create a gathering. And then we're going to do some cool things. So the short answer is no. As much as I would appreciate it, I want to make sure that we do it

the right way and we don't break any rules and get in trouble. But long term is use the platform to change people's lives inside of CrossFit but also use that social responsibility to help do more good in the world. Are you guys in this kind of new, I guess we could call it a partnership with CrossFit and headquarters and the games and all that, do they help back a lot of the social stuff that you guys are doing, or are they really just focused on finding the number one person that's going to walk into this event, or is it let's bring the Granite Games to the forefront of kind of this fitness scene and elevating all of the missions that you guys are doing

or is it just the competition side? That answer, I don't know. And it's not because I don't want to answer, it's because I don't know. I think CrossFit is, and their partners are open that they want to see these 16 thrive.

They've been very vocal about creating success for all of us. Whether they're going to get behind our initiatives, they've been very vocal about you know creating success for all of us whether they're going to get behind our initiatives they have their own initiatives and so i don't expect them to help push my my initiatives that's for me to go and move the needle on my expectation is they're going to help us continue to strengthen relationships with like rogue and um and help get athletes here in the media and that stuff i mean the media is insane trying to track down these individuals that you know know the sport and can shoot the sport and tell the story of what's happening so um the partnership is going to be good it's also going to be a learning curve yeah it's brand new yeah

you know it's new of 14 days ago yeah you, you said 16 events. Is that the number? That'll be, it sounds like that'll be the benchmark of what they're going to try to get to. I don't think it'll be there right away. Maybe it is. And I just, and in that world, I would openly say, I don't know. And my focus is we are one of them. And that's as far as my focus goes in that world. I just got to focus on us getting ready for June.

I'm not even, I don't think it's too far-fetched to say. I think it would be very, very hard to find 16 people. We got the little ones hanging out. We're going to put a microphone on him. That's awesome. Nope, it won't work, buddy. Dude. Go say hi to everybody.

Say hi. Oh, there it is. And then he gets shy. That was his moment. I mean, those curls, though, he looks like a little baby JT. Dude, wait until that hockey hair comes in. He's going to have some wings out the side. Oh, yeah.

I was just saying that I'm willing. I don't think it's too far-fetched to say, like, finding 16 people that have the experience and have the resources and the ability to dream something this large up is its own problem. And then are they going to be able to fulfill that dream and vision of what they need to build something like this? Yeah. Considering there's maybe six, seven of them globally

that have been around for a couple years right now. I think one of the things that we'll see at ShakeOut, and I don't know if this is true or not, I don't know if all the events will be like this. Something that comes to mind is it may be a little bit more ECC style. So it's a 10-lane rig Ben used to run. And it was more spectators than it was athletes. I think, you know, Guadalupe, what they're doing, you know, that's a big massive fitness festival.

This is a big massive fitness festival. I don't think they're going to create 16 massive fitness festivals. What I think will happen is we'll see maybe a little bit more of the Dubai style event. fitness festival i don't think they're going to create 16 massive fitness festivals what i think will happen is we'll see maybe a little bit more of the dubai yeah style event because those are i wouldn't call them easier because i don't want to that's not less moving pieces yeah there's uh the logistics of this thing is i mean if you see our our schedule it's insane yeah just the blocks you're moving around so when it all, when it all shakes out, I foresee there'll be fitness festivals and then there'll be also just some

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super cool. Shrugcollective.com backslash vault, $47 a month, 11 goal specific programs. Back to the show. When you look at the landscape of other just fitness competitions, we've talked a little bit about Spartan, and just is there a model in which you guys expand this into multiple locations, or is the focus purely just let's make the Granite Games as amazing as it can be in one event because it's going to take a full year to plan these things out anyways? We've played with the idea of creating Invitational, and it is written on the planning map uh so i like the idea of doing uh something like that it's a little bit smaller

yeah um the throwdowns that we're doing right now and in coming out of the beta year with them i think 8 000 athletes or 10 000 athletes competed in year one of the throwdowns. Those numbers are insane to me when you say that. Yeah, they're insane to me as well, by all means. Like I say them, and every now and then I'll be talking to a partner, and I'll say the number, and I'm like, you know what? Let me check that number real quick because I don't want to oversell you on something. And I come back, and I'm like, it was actually bigger. The throwdowns were averaging, it's between 4,000 and 6,000 athletes per,

and we ran four of them last year. We have one in December coming up. Those will be actually a qualifying event for the Granite Games. So the Granite Games is going to split into two components. We'll have our Team of Three component, which is our, we'll call it the amateur side of things, which is, I would call it very much the communal side of things. And so we'll have a throwdown, your team of three scaled intermediate. You can punch your ticket by finishing top five worldwide.

Eerily similar to what just got announced with CrossFit. Yeah. And then we'll have our pro side, which will be individuals, and then your two males, two females. So kind of two events actually happening at the same time just inside this fitness festival. Yeah, I actually remember when we all kind of had the regional events thinking it would be so smart of CrossFit to just hire all these competitions

to kind of do some of that work for them, and then they started their own regional thing, which kind of like wiped that idea out for five years. And the regionals were well done. Oh, they were awesome, which is probably why they had to stop, because this shit's expensive. Yeah. We went to Nashville the last couple years and Minneapolis,

and we have friends competing. It's not work for me. Yeah. So I like going. And I sit there as a fan, but also as an event producer, I guess you could say. And, like, even the games, I sit there and I fan but also as an event producer I guess you could say and like even the games I sit there and I'm like wow yeah they're doing this is such a good show yeah it's so well done when we walked into the games the first thing I saw was the wraparound banner on the stadium and I just looked at that and I was like, 20 grand. I don't know, but it was just like, you look at it and you're like,

nobody's thinking about how expensive that is or how cool that is. They just expect it to be there. Like it just looks nice, so it's there. Yeah, we use the term Disney. You know, Granite Games is, we more print this year, more banners. I want people to feel like this is the fitness of Disney when they come. And we were down at Disney for a fitness, not a fitness conference, a conference. And you walk inside Disney and you're no longer in the world.

You're in Disney's world. Yeah. And I think that's what CrossFit's done. I mean, they took the fairgrounds there and it feels like CrossFit land. Yeah. And that's not easy to do. And they did a really good job of it. I mean, you walk in the Coliseum, and there's 15-foot pictures of these, you know, athletes you absolutely look up to,

and they become larger in life by just blowing them up as well. You know, we try to do the same thing here with our athlete creed and the mantra and all that stuff. So, yeah, tons of respect for what CrossFit has done. You know, even bringing all the athletes out Thursday night, you know, the ceremony, and having that Olympic feel to it, that gave me chills. Like, my hair was standing watching that because, you know,

you guys have been in this for far longer than I have. 2011, there were, you know know we're only like a thousand gyms you know two thousand gyms then yeah it wasn't it wasn't huge yet um and i i started following crossfit in 2007 was when i first got out we were talking the other night i asked somebody said do you know where crossfit actual community page really was and everybody was guessing i was like it was the message boards you used to write in there and that's where the world the community lived yeah it's radically different now but so to see that growth and how they're able to don't to put that event on is incredible i remember when it actually changed because the message board was where everybody

hung out and then all of a sudden there was a there was like a call it like i want to say 2014 ish where the crossfit community thing was really just your gym where it went from this like message board everybody was kind of in the message board posting times comments conversations and then it just stopped yeah the message board went, and everybody's communicating only in their gym. There was enough people doing it where that conversation left the internet and became an actual community inside the gym. It's weird to think that it could come this far, like you're saying. Yeah, it's insane.

But where does it go? I don't know. I mean, it's insane. But where does it go? I don't know. I mean, it's got to grow. And with these changes, and you've got 16 events coming up, you guys almost have your own sectionals coming in. It's a very exciting time in that they can create such a progression to an entire year and a season. And now there are people, whether they're making any money or not,

it's a different thing, but they've committed their lives, well, until they're 32, 33 years old. They can't do it anymore, but it's a real thing. I was sitting next to people on the plane the other day that they had no idea that we talk on these microphones, and I was just eavesdropping, listening to their conversation. I'm like, what is the 23-year-old CrossFit athlete talking about now? And it's awesome.

They love it. These people are so committed to this life. And they're so dialed into everything that's going on with the games and the future, and everyone's scared. They don't know how to get their training right. And I was just sitting there listening, and I was like, you guys are awesome. Like, this is so real to you. This is your entire life now.

I don't know how do we keep growing this thing and making it better. I think one of the things that to continue to grow it, we can't lose foresight, though, of why we're here. And that's maybe crazy to say but like at the end of the day we're here for health and wellness so the thing that does scare me is when the change has happened people lost it and you know we all have to zoom out like 99.9 of us aren't professionals we're just moms and dads yeah sons and daughters and we're using this vehicle to live a better quality of life so that's the one thing that i always try to remind

our members at our jam is some things we can't control and that's okay um roll the punches but understand that the vehicle we're here ultimately is to be used to live in a life that you want to be able to do whatever you can do now sure competing you know is fun but don't allow that component to overtake the larger things that really matter in the world yeah um and so you know i think that's also what coach is trying to message he's trying to get across with health like hey this whole thing was started for something completely different it's here to you know change the world and you know end a lot of you know negative things that are happening well you guys have had a gym just what you said eight miles from here it started it when did the gym open 2011 so gym opens uh at june 1 and uh

the first event was uh 1 or 4. Wow. Yeah, it was guns ablaze. And I retired. I tore my ACL, and I think I landed right before April 1, and I had my level 1. I literally landed the day before my L1 was. I had it scheduled overseas. I actually emailed HQ.

I missed registration. I was still playing. When my knee was tore, I was like, all right, I can't play for a year, so I might as well open a gym. I had been following CrossFit for five years already. When you knee was tore, I was like, all right, I can't play for a year, so I might as well open a gym. I had been following CrossFit for five years already. When you were playing hockey? Yeah.

Cool. And so I was just so excited to join the community. Like I felt like an outsider because I couldn't do it eight months out of the year. And so getting the opportunity to open the gym and, you know, actually give back. Because hockey, I felt like playing professionally felt selfish after a while. Where did you play at? I played at St. Claude State collegiately and then uh which is which is fun like if you look closely i'm on the walls in there it's very cool um i don't like to point it out because it's odd and weird but and then i played professionally so um i never played in nhl i played basically hl uh echl and then I played in Europe and Norway. Killer. So Europe was.

ECHL. Yep. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. The Norfolk Admirals. My first professional game, I actually was, I played on Norfolk. Yeah, that was my, I lived in Virginia Beach, so I had season tickets to them. Yeah.

I used to skate in between periods. Yeah. Pretty radical. What is it? Scope Arena. Yeah. Scored my first goal in my first game. I was like cloud nine.

And then a couple years later, I tore my knee. And it was like oddly a blessing. Like I walked away. I was sitting in this little apartment in Norway all alone. And I just like, this is your awesome opportunity to walk away from a sport. Nobody can question you while you're walking away. You know, you got an injury to use as an escape goal. And I did.

I was like, I want to do this new thing. And nobody knew about CrossFit. There was not a gym in this town. And my family's like, why are you walking away? You get paid good money to play this game you love. And I was like, but I want to do this new thing. And like my family hated me for the first like two years, like you're, you're so dumb. You should go back and play. You should go back and play. And now I look back and I'm like, thank goodness.

I was willing to take that risk and step away. Or not take the risk. Like, I had to. Like, that was a beauty. Were you married and all that when you opened? I wasn't. And I also will say, thank goodness I wasn't married and I didn't have kids. I think we can all agree to that.

I would not imagine. I don't know if my wife would have lived in the gym with me for like a year and a half. Yeah. I met Jessica a couple months after running the gym, and we dated. But dating is so different than having a family and kids and all those things. Now my daughter walks up early, and it's like she's a non-negotiable. Five o'clock, I go home. There was no going home in

2011 i know i mean the hours you work in the the first years to get it off the floor is insane um and so especially when your peak hours are five six o'clock in the evening like when you go home is when everyone shows up yeah that's the time to read your daughter a book to go to bed and yeah you know i just looked back at my childhood, and I was like, I want to do things a little bit different than how my childhood was. And so when my daughter was born, that's when some big changes, like Granite Games-wise and gym-wise, like we had to make some big shifts, build teams,

and, like, otherwise it wasn't worth it. Yeah. As far as people going to the games, I haven't actually read, like, the official announcement. I bet a lot of other people probably haven't read either. They just hear through the grapevine kind of what's happening. For people that come to the Granite Games next year, how many people get to go to the games? Is it just first place or just if you podium?

Right now, and again, I think what I will say, and not trying to defend anybody, but this is just purely my opinion. Right now it will be one, one athlete and one team, male, female. But I think what CrossFit HQ is, it's so new. They're trying to figure out, you know, how that's going to flow. Would I be surprised if it goes to two or three? Would I be surprised if they do it like regionals where some of the other events have maybe a couple more spots?

None of that would shock me. But I think the easy thing to say, we're going to give you one spot. Because it's easier to give more down the road than it is to take away. Yeah, totally. And I think that's the route they're going with it. Let's just give them one, and then if it makes sense that, you know, how this whole thing shakes out that Guadalupe should have five spots.

It's justified. Based off the caliber. Look at Dubai. That's a CrossFit Games in its own right. That's going to be a very tough event to come out of. I think they're going to play with how one spot affects the outcome. What does two, what does

three do? If there's a big event and you have 200 individual men One spot affects the outcome. What does two, what does three do? Right. If there's a big event and you have 200 individual men versus another event where there's 50 individual men, like, it's a different competition. Like, are there any restrictions around, like, where you live, like it was for regionals, like where you can just pick any competition? I think it's wide open. In that case, would there be announcements of, like, who's already signed up for the event?

That's the, are you showing up to any event hoping nobody really, really good is there? Well, that's, that's the tricky part because I don't know this, but I'm guessing the athletes will talk because if you're a top competitor, it would be advantageous to make sure you're not at another event that, you know, if I'm, you know, Vellner, I'm not going where Frazier's going and vice versa. You know, why do that when it's not necessary? Why wait for that show to happen in August? So, like I said, it's one right now. I truly believe that it's easier to give more later on

than it is to take things away. Right. And they're trying to see it. 2019 is a learning year. The thing I admire is, you know, if you're trying to see it. 2019 is a learning year. The thing I admire is if you're going to make changes fast and quick, let's just do it and then be open with rolling with punches. And that was my message to those guys is, like, I'm willing to learn as long as we communicate well and I can try to understand what's going on.

It makes sense. So one, it is for 19, who knows it could be it could change i assume the relationship that you guys have had with hq has been good in that you guys went through with this big plan of theirs and are pretty integral part of it but one thing i've always learned so i i did the sectional in 2010 and then the open started and i remember literally sitting in the gym being like oh this whole thing's screwed this is never gonna work everyone's gonna cheat it's gonna be terrible crossfit's over like what am i gonna do as an athlete i've been working my ass off and now they take the sectional away they're always getting better and they're always

asking questions and i feel like glassmanman and Castro are always far down the line on kind of seeing where they're going. When you're in those conversations, what is maybe the higher level thinking of, clearly there's the financial side that they need to get rid of the regionals and that they just eat so many resources. But how does the conversation feel in in the room when you sit down with them and say like we're we're down to be a part of this

but where how what is what is kind of the big picture in the the culture that they're creating with the games now that they've kind of taken a lot of their resources away from the games and and moved it to the health side of things. I think what they realized is, you know, for a couple years, we were, you know, not to be talked about, right? Like, I was looking at, I was laying in bed last night, falling asleep with Jess. That is true.

I forgot that they would never talk about anyone. And in that picture of the girl doing the bar muscle-up, I think the quote is something along the lines of, like, this is CrossFit. Somewhere I saw that written. And I look over at Jess, and I say to her, I say, isn't it amazing that we can just finally say that out loud? Yeah.

Because we've always. You used to be. You probably would have gotten sued five years ago. We've always loved the community. We've always loved this thing. And yet we weren't allowed to exist 100 in the ecosystem and that's what the team has brought us in and that's the thing that is i think what they realize is like if we give these guys like it's not us anymore so they're giving up the control which is impressive yeah because they

again regionals was beautiful they didn't need to give up the control but they're realizing like hey these things that exist whether we like it or not give up the control. But they're realizing, like, hey, these things that exist, whether we like it or not, are actually, they're doing fine. They're okay. They keep happening. Yeah. And so I think they realize that if they give us some oxygen, we can actually add more value to the community.

And I've been on the bad side of that when Ogar and all of that really terrible stuff happened. And literally Castro was there that afternoon, like helping with damage control. And then like CrossFit, that wasn't a CrossFit accident. Well, what are we then? Like, what is this thing? We have thousands of people here doing this functional fitness thing,

competing against each other. Your figureheads are at the event helping us handle this situation, and publicly you hate us. It's very interesting that they come around all these years later because so many people are putting such good work into making the name better that they can finally bring everyone up and make it a full community event almost. Yeah, it was like I remember doing interviews in the past year and people would ask me a question. I'm like, so you're a CrossFit event.

I'm like, do not say we're a CrossFit event. Please don't write that. Please don't write that. But it feels so refreshing because, again, it's like I've been the guy. I feel like when everybody's having Christmas, opening their presents, I've been the guy looking through the window, like being like, I just wish I could be in there. And, you know, and part of it, actually, it kind of causes a lot of conflict internally.

You're like, are we not doing it well enough? Are we not professional enough? Is our judging not? So, like, you all of a sudden become insecure with, like, what you're doing. Like, why won't they allow us in we we're we're raising money and we're doing all these things we're trying to really help the community and so when we when we got the message we're like okay now we didn't jump at it either that's not the other thing that happened we didn't just say yes oh that was that was the other side is, whoa, okay, amazing. How is this going to affect our community?

How does it change? Because the drum that we beat is everybody's an athlete. And all of a sudden, part of our event is to go be the world's fittest athlete in the world. And that's very elitist. But we are not an elitist-style event. We are a communal event we're community driven so it feels great to be allowed in and be welcomed with open arms and and accepted at the same time the answer was not just yes let's do this it was let's have a lot of conversations at any point

was there any resentment in there of saying oh now it cool. Now that we have all of this and now we've got this massive following, now it's okay. I think you could maybe see that, but I think ultimately my perspective on business is always people make decisions based off the knowledge they have in the time that they're present. So I'm never resentful. I've made mistakes. I've said things.

I've done things and what i realized that people grow past it and so at the time where crossfit was at it is what it is yeah and at the time we're at right now it is what it is so i never hold grudges and i never try to be resentful i always try to forgive and move forward and so if this is the the path we're taking yeah let's take it and it was what it was back in 2014 and 15 and 16. And that's okay. Yeah. Where does the event side of this thing go?

I mean, the fact that we have triathlons, we've got swimming and all this. Swimming's been around. You've got an obstacle course now. What the hell else are these athletes gonna need to do can you go back to the baseball throw please like put that one in here and let's see if they learn how to throw softball at all but like i mean what what are the capabilities of these athletes now and almost in like creating a qualifying event for the games because that that's piece of Dave Castro's puzzle is the shock and awe of, oh my gosh, these athletes have never seen this thing before

and now we're putting them on national TV and they can't climb a pegboard. Yep. I think save it for the games. So you guys just let's keep this thing CrossFit. Let's keep it. I think one of the things that somebody said to me today was, your programming is so simple. And I was like, do you know how hard it is to write simple and elegant programming?

Like, go ask any of the pros or any of the, you know, team of three that did that Assault Runner and that Barbell workout and tell me that was easy. Anything from easy. It was hard, very, very was it was it was hard very very hard but it was simple and if you look at the 20 or 2007 8 9 10 11 all those original years of crossfit if you could use one word simple and effective program design and so i think that's the thing that always scares me is that when people go to start their own competition they get the reins

they get the keys to the ferrari and're like, I'm going to do this. We're going to have to do this. We're going to have to do this. And it's like the key is to pump the brakes and say, what are the exact tests that we need to elicit the response that we need to get the winners that we need and have it be balanced? And that's what I – I mean, I always try to write simple programming. Boring, you could say.

But allow the programming and the athletes to tell the story. Yeah. And I think Castro does a – he thinks of stuff, boring you could say but allow the programming and athletes to tell the story yeah and and i think castro does a he thinks of stuff and i just sit there watching each year and i'm like how did he think of that that's incredible yeah that's incredible um one of the things with the obstacle course that we wanted to do this year was to emulate that concept but to go and spin so he's got a clearly a background, which I do not have. But I also don't have a Ninja Warrior background.

But I was like, okay, if we're going to do it, I can't do what they did from that, you know, the couple years they've done it. We can't emulate any of that because it'll look not nearly as well done. What we can do is we can do a version that's a little bit Ninja Warrior, kind of. Almost playground-esque. And so that's what we did is we created something that you felt's a little bit Ninja Warrior, kind of. Almost Playground-esque.

And so that's what we did, is we created something that you felt like you were a child again on the Playground. Yeah. And I think, like, when I pulled up and that thing was built on Friday morning, I'm like, this looks really cool. Yeah. Like, it looks really professional. And so that's where I think the programming should go,

is I think the larger events need to keep it simple. It doesn't mean they can't have a little bit of creativity. Look at, you know, we're using drag ropes here. Never been used ever. The sandbag that we used a couple years back in the carry. That was the first year the sandbags were ever used. And then you see them in the games. And so I'm always going to try to have a little something

that the athletes haven't, but I'm not going to try to ever get carried away with it. Well, the progression of the athlete is just unbelievable, and the Granite Games was the first time I actually, I think I told you this the first time we talked, like a person from my gym won the snatch event. It was like the double under snatch event at, I don't even know what year it was, but it was called 2013 Regionals.

It was like 255. And then two years later at the Granite Games, 12 people snatched 275. And it was like a 10. I was like, what happened last year? Where in the hell are we supposed to go now? And now you've got, what was it, an 18-year-old girl, 17-year-old girl that jerked 235 at the games. What are these kids going to do?

Yeah, it'll be, I mean, you'll see. I don't know what time they clean, but. I'm really excited about that. Garrett Fisher might clean over 400. Someone's going to clean 400 for sure. I like, the first thing when I wrote that work, I was like, I messaged Rogue. I'm like, how much weights do we have access to? Because it's going to get heavy.

I've always wanted to do max deadlift, which I think is just, but they did it at the Games here. Hardest part for our event, I love that we're going June because I can write all my workouts now and I don't have to worry. There have been times where we've, you know, go to the Games and all of a sudden we have to delete a bunch of programming because it looks too similar. I had written max deadlift this year, and then the total came out,

and I was like, beautiful event. Ah, I have to go rewrite. And so what fit in really well this year was, okay, heavy pull. What's the next best heavy pull outside of a dead? Clean. Well, clean's kind of fun. No jerk. Take out the shoulders.

They already did tons of shoulder work. Yeah. So the max clean is going to be. I love that you put a little prize at the end too. Like, here's your barbell. Yeah. If you win, there's a little prize at the end. Spice this thing up a little bit.

Yeah. Let's, you know, and reward. Like, again, the pro athletes that are coming, we always try to make it unique for them. Like, something cool. So. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, getting to take home a custom Rogue barbell is pretty neat. I'd like it.

Yeah, I would love it. I would love to be strong enough to even think about getting a free one at the end of a Max Clean event. Given that there's two separate ways to make it to the games now, you can win a big competition or you can you can win the open and if you're the if you are the number one person in your country you get to go to the games is that is that accurate the way i just said it um from my knowledge and the information that i present i think that is what it looks like to be um and it's interesting just speaking to a lot of

the athletes i don't know which route they're going to go. CrossFit may say you have to do the Open. You have to be registered to be an eligible athlete. You know, you see a lot of sports do that. This is a little bit closer to math. I think it got loud in here. You see a lot of athletes, you see a lot of sports where you have to be registered to do their thing, right? Which would make sense.

You have to do the Open. But from a competition side, would you rather do three days or would you rather do five weeks? Right. For a professional athlete, the Open's very hard on them, not physically, mentally. Yeah. Because it's complete losing of their mind of, like, what athlete is doing what.

And it's been interesting to say from the athletes I've spoken with, a lot of them are like, we're allowed to. I'd rather skip the Open and just go do the three-day comp because it's less stressful, it's shorter, and then they can return back to their training quicker. They can't. The Open and Regionals really ate up a massive chunk of the year. Yeah, right.

And a very, like, I always i always say like i always feel bad for pro crossfit athletes the mental strain that is wearing on them i mean it's you know it'll be new years i got trained oh yeah i mean it was like when i played hockey it was unwritten rule nobody did anything in june didn't matter what level you are you like everybody just chilled out we lift some weights nobody's really skating that doesn't exist in crossfit everybody is like constantly charging hard yeah every day it reminds me of like when phelps talked about prepping for the olympics he's like i swam on christmas christmas eve new year's like no days off i had to win and it's like that's great but if you're gonna do that every day you're gonna

you're gonna be a world champion but you're also gonna burn that every day, you're going to be a world champion, but you're also going to burn out. Yeah. I also wonder how many CrossFit athletes are going to say, I'm going to do my best to try to win one of these competitions, but I don't know who's going to beat these competitions, so now I just have to pick whatever the first competition is after the games and try. And if I make it, great. And if I don't, then I just pick the next one and I try.

Now they're competing like all year long to try to get one of the spots as opposed to just prepping for regionals and hopefully winning and going to the games. Well, and they may not get into all of them either. You know, like, that's the other thing is. Because you've got to do the qualifiers. You've got to do the qualifiers or we've got to figure out how, you know, the invitational spots happen.

You know, is that something where, hey, if you're ranked in the top 100, you get a card, and we have to allow so many spots to be open for you to register? Some of those details we do not know yet. What happens when Matt Frazier decides that he's going to do 16 events plus the games and be the first person to make a million dollars in winnings through CrossFit alone. Yeah. Like he, I mean, there's a lot of fun scenarios that you can play out on who's going to be at what event.

And then if you don't qualify, like you were saying, Doug, do you go to the next one? And you've got 16 months if they try and turn this into a season. Yep. Well, our season's six months long and the games is at the end. You need at least a month from the last competition to the games for people to prepare

or whatever it is. So now you've got a four month-ish, four and a half month window of 16 events. That's every single weekend a new gigantic Granite Games is going off. How the hell do these guys or anybody keep this straight and program this thing out so that if you are lucky enough to get to the games and you're

inside the top whatever percent it is to be able to get there and now it's like like it'll be very interesting to see how people go about piecing this together. And I always think no one cares because Frazier's just going to smash them when they get there anyways. Well, the thing with Matt is he basically just went to June and January. I mean, most likely he'll do a lot of blues. It's, you know, travel-wise the easiest for him. And schedule-wise it makes the most sense. You know, Dubai from a schedule size makes sense,. And schedule-wise, it makes the most sense. You know, Dubai, from a schedule size, makes sense,

but it doesn't make sense from a travel side. So he just went from doing all these things, having to peak for, not peak for regionals, but be ready, and now he's going to go January, and then he's going to go August. That's scary. That's a lot of prep time for him. Yeah. And he's already essentially unbeatable.

I mean, he is really gifted as an athlete. And so I think you'll see a lot of the top five, top ten, they'll punch their tickets early. You'll see somebody like our event, which I actually am excited to see that story unfold, is we'll have some of the last spots. Yeah. We'll have kind of that last ticket.

And what a cool story that is for our event to kind of be that showpiece. But I think for Matt, he goes Jan, and then he just hops in his shed and goes to work, and he just becomes unbeatable. That guy is such a savage. I wonder how many people in the U.S. are just going to scatter around the world. Yeah, and that's – You want to open an affiliate in, like, Zimbabwe?

Totally. Antarctica. I'm going to the games. Let like, Zimbabwe. Totally. Antarctica. I'm going to the games. Let's do it. CrossFit Games 2020. Do you have to be a resident? How does that work? I don't know.

That, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that stuff is going to flesh out. What I also think is, you know, there's a lot of questions right now about, well, there's going to be this many athletes. Well, I would say we have 2,000 here, right? They're going to be able to figure that out. They may have to make some cuts happen, which would be logical. You're not going to have 600 athletes competing on Sunday, but

I think you can get people competing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In some way, somehow, who knows? Maybe if you win your country, you get the invitation, but you're not at the real show. Maybe that CrossFit Games is a two-part event.

There's the lead-up, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Well, yeah, after three workouts, we can cut 80 people. Yeah. Are you going to come all the way out here to work out on Tuesday when no one's watching? Yeah. I totally would for the T-shirt. Yeah.

Yeah, the Reebok kit is legit. Yeah. I mean, it's worth the trip yeah so clothing for the next two years you know uh this is completely off topic but i see it right now one of the people that has been so impressive this weekend um and is clepa oh yeah he's just he's been amazing you know when you think you're working really hard and then you meet somebody that's actually working really hard? So we had him at 7 o'clock in the morning yesterday, and we wake up at like 5.30.

We're like, ah, we should get some coffee. It's early. Kickstarting a really good conversation at 7 a.m. is just a little on the early side to really dig into it. You're kind of like, like how we get down there he's already got Stacy Tovar on his show they're in there he's got his like Kalipa hands going crazy you can tell he's like incredibly engaged and you're like oh I was feeling bad for myself like that's what it looks like over there that guy gets it well and the last time we saw him was, like, 11 p.m. the night before. He was up later than us.

Yeah. We ate dinner at the same spot, and then we saw him in the lobby of the hotel. Like, he didn't go to bed at, like, 8 p.m. and then wake up at 4 a.m. and do a show. Like, he went to bed probably, like, midnight and was, like, doing his first show at 5. By 9.30, he had done four podcasts. Yeah.

We were at the games and kind of catching up, and he's like, hey, man, let's do a podcast. I'm like, all right. 5 a had done four podcasts. Yeah. We were at the games and kind of catching up. And he's like, hey, man, let's do a podcast. I'm like, all right. 5 a.m. tomorrow. I was like, nah, man, I'm out. 5 a.m. I'm not doing that. I was like, if that's what it takes to be successful.

I'm cool with my 3,000 followers on Instagram. I'm like, he's an exceptionally hard worker. Watching him prepare for his presentation was i was like dude you got this like you it's all inside you and the level of like he like looked at me and he's like no it needs to be freaking great i was like i respect it at the same time but i'm like you totally got it like you you totally got it. Like, you're going to kill it. You know what you're going to present. But his unwillingness to take his foot off the gas, I mean, it was like 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, run it again, run it. I mean, it was like Herb Brooks, 1980 hockey style, like, do it again.

Let's do it again. Do it again. In the morning he came back, 9 a.m. I mean, he ran through the presentation on site here like six or seven times. I'm like, Jason, you have it down. No, it needs to be better i'm like and part of me is like that's also why you were world champion yeah right you know he's he's a stud because he's relentless it's one piece i really liked about the amrap mentality they got

into was the hard work and everybody sees him on stage but nobody sees the eight reps that he did at six o'clock in the morning and the three hours he put into doing it, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, it just looks so easy up there. It's like writing a great workout. Your programs are so simple here. Oh, yeah, it only took me six months to write it. I'm glad it looks simple now. It was a terrible problem six months ago.

Me and Anders have this thing about people where the ultimate compliment you could give somebody is saying that they get it and that's like totally when i see kalipa i go that dude fucking gets it yeah he gets it yeah you were telling me that you guys interviewed him like two three years ago and you walked away we're like oh oh he's way different oh yeah i didn't know him before that for that first interview three or four or five years ago and you know went over his house, like did a whole thing in his garage, and I was like part of the reason that I say he gets it isn't because he has like one silo piece of his life put together.

I feel like he has that, and he talked about this in his presentation, like the family man piece, the entrepreneur piece, and the athlete piece. Like he gets it on all those levels. He has that full package, which is very rare. It's exceptionally rare. My relationship with Jace is crazy interesting. I never met him, but watching him compete, and I sent him an email back in 2014.

I asked him a business, a gym owner question, and I just used my CrossFit. I didn't use my Granite Games email or anything, just CrossFit Fast Factory. And he emails me back like four days later. And I just asked him a simple question about something. He emails back the answer. I didn't respond back because it didn't warrant response.

And all I did was walk away with like, wow, he emailed me back because I've emailed so many other people. Yeah. And they just don't get back to you. And that to me, like he was he goes no man i respond to everybody and i'm like you get it you get the whole thing of like he understands like he's doing good helping others like he helped me that day and when i could get myself in a position and offer him an opportunity to come out and do you know and help him push what he's doing

i was that's why when i left that conference, I was like, there's one person I owe a favor to, and it's Jason. Just because of the fact he sent me that email, I never forgot it. Four years later, he gets to come out here, and we get to do some awesome things together, and no wonder why he is who he is, the success he's had. Incredible to watch somebody that's succeeding at business almost more exponentially than they're

exceeding as an athlete and he's standing on the podium five years in a row or four years in a row at the crossfit games which is getting so much better every single year and it's like how do you keep getting better and then holy shit your business is growing even faster than you're getting better as an athlete and then holy shit this family thing that you have going on is like taking you so far away from everything and somehow it all seems to be working it's he's a freak yeah he's uh and you see it though you see a lot of games athletes come out and they don't have that next step yeah right and i was like there was I think he picked up speed. Yeah.

He was finally able to focus. So I can focus on just one thing now, business-wise, I'm going to kill it. And, yeah, he's been intense, focused, and has the ability to execute, and it's impressive. And very consistent. Yeah. This has been a phenomenal weekend. We're only on Saturday morning here,

but thank you very much for having us out. Thank you for reaching out to us. Thursday night was an absolute blast, and I can't wait to grow with you guys and just really grateful that you guys, one, put all the work in over the last eight years to build this and that we're able to be a part of it.

Yeah, thanks for having me, and thanks for taking time away for you guys' family. There's a lot of other things that you guys could be doing and not in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and the fact that you guys are willing to do what it is you guys do and inspire the community in the way you do and help change lives, I feel very lucky to have you guys here on site. So thank you guys for coming. All of the updates coming, where can they find you? More info on winning this event next year so they can go to the CrossFit Games? Yeah.

I always just push them to granitegames.com or hit up our Instagram or Facebook. And, you know, as we get our plan put back together, once we get out of here, it'll be fun. Obviously, with the growth of how things are going to change, it's like, do we go to a new city? How do we expand? What is next for us? There's a lot of unknowns right now, which has me completely freaked out. Thankfully, there's so much happening right now that I can't be freaked out because there's no time to focus on it.

So a week from now, it's going to be complete, utter panic, excitement, and it's going to be the shortest turnaround ever. So it'll be fun. And you do own a gym in town. What's the name of that gym? We go by Fast Factory Fitness, otherwise CrossFit Fast Factory. Yeah, it's been a fun little blessing uh cool little space yeah kind of the the heartbeat of then you get to grow into this big big thing yeah it's uh it's been tons of fun and you know between running the gym

and and the the consulting work we do with other affiliates, it's been a massive blessing. Like, CrossFit's been really a neat thing, neat community. And so, you know, helping other gym owners be successful has been fun. And to put on an event has been fun. And to have a gym has been fun. So, yeah. Very cool. Appreciate it.

Doug Larson. Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I also have my own site, DougLarsonFitness.com, where I have my thoughts on mostly movement and nutrition, things like nutrition for weightlifters, one of my favorite products, movement-specific mobility, and other similar things there. I do technique quads every Sunday,

teaching people how to lift weights, barbell shrug every Wednesday. I love it. Find me at Anders Varner, but cooler. Get into the Stroke Collective. Six, seven, eight shows, 20, 50 shows a week. We're cranking out all kinds of fun content these days, but six days a week right now.

We just hit a million episodes, a million downloads a month. Crazy. I'm telling everybody because that number is just so. It's a big number. It's super cool. We turned into the collective. Things kind of grow, and people catch up and figure out what you're trying to do, and the message starts to sink into people.

Bigger and bigger. Two months in a row, over a million downloads. I didn't talk about it in month one because I didn't want to be a fluke. Now I feel like we're here forever. But six shows a week, Shrug Collective. Barbell Shrugged every Wednesday. We'll see you guys next week.